A sobering dose of truth

Teens get an up-close look at criminal justice system at ninth annual Youth in Court Day

Alex Meyers, 18, a senior at Rancho Buena Vista High School in Vista, listened at Superior Court in Vista yesterday to a former Torrey Pines High student convicted last fall of gross vehicular manslaughter for killing a fellow student.
— John R. McCutchen / Union-Tribune

Alex Meyers, 18, a senior at Rancho Buena Vista High School in Vista, listened at Superior Court in Vista yesterday to a former Torrey Pines High student convicted last fall of gross vehicular manslaughter for killing a fellow student.
— John R. McCutchen / Union-Tribune

Superior Court Judge Joan Weber addressed students from the bench in her Vista courtroom during yesterday’s Youth in Court Day.
— John R. McCutchen / Union-Tribune

YOUTH IN COURT DAY

San Diego County Court, North County Division, in conjunction with the Bar Association of Northern San Diego County and the Lawyer Referral Service.

Ninth annual event introduced students to such topics as the criminal justice system and law enforcement and law careers. A series of talks covered such topics as gangs, family violence, drugs and forensic evidence.

VISTA  On Oct. 4, when Brandon was arrested for felony drunken driving and his friend lay dead in a morgue, everything changed.

Gone were the carefree days of senior year, the anticipation of graduating Torrey Pines High School and the promise of landing a scholarship to play lacrosse at an East Coast college.

Instead, Brandon was stripped of his clothes and given a jail-issue orange shirt and blue sweats. The teenager’s dignity was stripped next, replaced by panic and fear coaxed by pimps, drug dealers and rapists who stared him down and called him “fresh meat.”

The next morning, his father’s birthday, he faced his parents and the horror of what he had done.

But Brandon, then 17, was lucky. He was alive, and his friend, Alex Capozza, was dead.

“There’s not a day that I don’t think about Alex and his family,” Brandon told a large group of teenagers visiting Superior Court in Vista yesterday to learn about the criminal justice system, and in the case of Brandon’s talk, the consequences of drunken driving. “I had everything anyone could ask for. I was well-liked and respected. ... With one bad decision, I lost it all.”

Brandon — the court requested that his last name not be published — was ordered Dec. 10 to serve up to 547 days at Camp Barrett, the county’s Juvenile Court detention facility in Alpine. He pleaded guilty to gross vehicular manslaughter and inflicting great bodily injury in connection with the crash in Rancho Santa Fe.

The students who listened to Brandon’s talk, titled “Drunken Driving Disaster,” were among 900 students who visited the court yesterday as part of the ninth annual Youth in Court Day. Students learned the ins and outs of the criminal justice system, as well as careers in law and law enforcement. Brandon’s talk was one of several held for high school students in the afternoon. Other topics included the dangers of gangs, the role of defense attorneys, domestic violence, forensics, how a jury is selected in a death-penalty trial, stories from drug court, and a mock trial for a sexual-harassment case.

Brandon’s talk had particular resonance. At least nine fatal car crashes involving drivers under age 21 occurred in the county during the last four months of 2009. Eleven people died. In at least five of those, alcohol or drugs were suspected as the cause. In a typical year, intoxicated teens cause about six fatal accidents in the county, according to the California Highway Patrol.

In a 2007 national survey, nearly three out of 10 teenagers said that within the past month, they had been with a driver who had been drinking.